Draymond Green dropped a peculiar nugget about his collegiate career after his jersey was retired at Michigan State. The Golden State Warriors forward and proud Saginaw native remembers looking up to Flint natives Morris Peterson, Mateen Cleaves, and Charlie Bell, who led MSU to a national title in 2000, but his career almost started with a completely different jersey.
Green remembers getting no offer from coach Tom Izzo or Michigan State, which resulted in looking at other options:
“I had went down for a game,” Green told Logan Murdock of NBC Sports Bay Area. “That's when Joakim Noah was at Florida, and I went down for the game, Florida at Kentucky [ESPN's] College Gameday] was there. And I was just like, ‘Yo, this is nuts.'
“It was Kentucky,” he added. “I ain't get an offer from Michigan State, this is enough. I'd love to go here. And that's just what it was. I didn't have my number one choice, that's not a bad number two.”
Things changed eight months before Green signed his letter of intent, as then-coach Tubby Smith resigned, taking the Minnesota Gophers job and reopening Green's recruitment once more, giving him one last chance to link up with his top choice.
Green revealed a fateful conversation he had with Izzo:
“I got a call from coach Izzo at like 7 o’clock the next morning,” Green said last week. “He was cussing me out. ‘How could you commit to Kentucky?’ I was like, ‘Dude, I didn’t even have an offer from y’all.’ He cussed me out some more. He was like, ‘Yes, the f*** you did. Here’s your f***ing offer if you didn’t think you had one.’”
The rest is simply history. Green signed his letter of intent shortly after and would make his name as one of the signature players from Izzo's program after spending four seasons in East Lansing.
Almost a Wildcat, but always a Spartan.
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